Aspen
AvalancheBrian Lazar · Jan 24, 2020 · Aspen
Weather
Warm, calm and sunny. Barely any wind even at ridgetop. Sun and warm temperatures with no breeze made it feel really warm below 11,000 ft by mid afternoon.
Snowpack
Recent storm snow was around 20 inches in this area and showed signs of settlement today. Obvious signs of wind affect at higher elevations and exposed ridgelines. The new snow is now forming a soft slab at lower elevations and on sunny slopes in sheltered areas. There is a fresh layer of surface hoar in sheltered locations that will likely persist and potentially be preserved in sheltered north-facing terrain with fresh snow Friday night. No obvious signs of instability like whumpfing or cracking, but we avoided steep wind-loaded east-facing terrain and cross-loaded features terrain which looked rather scary with obvious wind-drifted slabs. Low-elevation sunny slopes got moist by mid afternoon and there were some some natural Loose Wet Avalanches in the storm snow.
Avalanche
There was quite the variety of avalanche activity in the last 24 hours in this area including Loose Dry, Loose Wet, Wind Slab, Storm Slab, and even a Glide avalanche. The 20-22 inches of recent storm snow released in widespread and long running sluffs up to D1.5 in size. By this afternoon, Loose Wet avalanches up to D1.5 were running out of steep rocky areas and on south and west-facing slopes in very steep terrain. A couple of Wind Slab avalanches looked they they released yesterday, and we witnessed a few glide cracks today, one of which avalanched while we were there. On west-facing terrain the storm snow settled enough that we could trigger small (D1) Storm Slab avalanches about 16 inches deep on steep slopes.